That's so Huang!: Road trip to Michigan, part III

On Friday morning before we left Ypsilanti, we tried getting a group shot of all the kiddos. Easier said than done. This is one of the better shots, with at least the majority of the kids looking at the camera.

Kayla wasn't in the mood to smile. Jocelyn wasn't in the mood to look at the camera when we asked her to.

We loaded up the car and were on the road by 10:00 am. I drove and George entertained the kids. Not too far into our trip, Jocelyn looked like this:

...while Kayla was, of course, still wide-awake despite not having gotten the normal amount of sleep she usually gets when we're home. Thank goodness for the DVD player in the minivan:

She insisted on wearing her brand new Michigan hat in the car -- "Just like Daddy's hat!" She was so excited to wear her hat and kept it on way longer than she needed to... her head was pretty sweaty when she finally took it off an hour later.

Being the Friday before July 4th, there were lots of RVs and campers on the road heading north. I think it might be fun to someday rent an RV and take a long road trip with the girls. At about 1:00 we stopped for lunch at a Burger King near a big outlet shopping center. We probably would have stopped to do some shopping (and stretch our legs at the same time), but the girls seemed pretty tired, so after our delicious lunch of chicken sandwiches and chicken nuggets, we continued north.

At around 3:00 pm we crossed over Mackinac Bridge, which connects the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan. It's just about the halfway point from Ann Arbor to George's parents' house in Houghton. Two years earlier, we had driven to Mackinac City from Houghton and taken a ferry ride to Mackinac Island.

Looking back at these pictures, I can't believe how similar Kayla and Jocelyn look at this age!! It's also a bittersweet reminder of how quickly time flies and that I need to slow down, stop and enjoy each day that I have with my two little girls... because soon enough, they won't be so little anymore!

In preparation for this road trip, I got my hands on a family-friendly Michigan guidebook. (The contents were pretty sparse when you got to the section on the Upper Peninsula.) One of the more intriguing places that was listed was a place 40 minutes west of the bridge, the Garlyn Zoo. It was even right along our intended route, so we wouldn't have to go too far out of our way.

I wish I had taken a picture of the sign to the zoo. Being that it's a one-lane highway with a speed limit of 55 mph, it would have been very easy to breeze by without blinking an eye. But we were on the lookout well in advance... and started getting a little worried about what kind of "zoo" this was when we didn't see ANY billboards for it on the highway.

We finally saw the sign:

This is a photo from their website. I think they must have *just* gotten the landscaping done 3 minutes before they took this picture.

We pulled into the gravel parking lot at around 4 pm, and the zoo closed at 6 pm. There was only one other car there, a sedan. (A zoo employee's, perhaps?) We saw a wood cabin type structure just past gravel pathway. Now George and I were really getting worried about this "zoo." Just then, another minivan pulled into the parking lot and two adults with a little girl hopped out. I felt reassured that at least we weren't the only ones who were possibly getting scammed by this "zoo." At this point, however, I could have cared less about how rustic-looking this establishment was. The girls were tired of sitting in the car (as well as me and George) and we needed to get out and stretch our legs, so this zoo was the perfect diversion.

When we walked into the cabin (which was really a gift shop), we paid for our admission, along with three ice cream cake cones that were filled with animal feed. We walked through the gift shop and out another door, where we were greeting by this friendly but funny-looking fellow:

He walked right up to us. Kayla and Jocelyn were a little scared. Then we saw a little wagon and popped them inside for a wagon ride.

We saw lots of interesting-looking animals (I'd list their names but I can't remember them any more). Kayla wanted to feed them, but every time she got close to an animal she'd get scared, hand me the cone and tell me to feed the animal.

"Look! It's a ---!"

"---Goat!"

"Mommy, I want to feed the goat."

"No, Mommy, you do it."

"Mommy, I want to feed the baby deer."

"Mommy, I can't do it!"

Notice how far back Kayla is standing while she watches me feed the deer? The deer was actually pretty greedy, it licked the inside of the cone and then took a big chomp out of it and had such a strong grip that I let go of it.

It turns out that Jocelyn has no fear. She marched right up to the deer with her cone.

By the time we circled back around to the cabin again, it was almost 4:45 pm. The whole zoo didn't even take us an hour! So we let the girls out of the wagon to give them an opportunity to run around a little bit before we got back in the van again. They looked for the big black bear, but he was hiding out in the back of his cage and we couldn't get a good shot of him.

While coaxing the girls to go back towards the cabin, Kayla and Jocelyn held hands and stopped for hugs along the way. I love how they are showing affection towards each other!!